A software boom for CD-ROMs - small business computing

Nation's Business, Jan, 1995 by Albert G. Holzinger

Minit Mart Foods in Bowling Green, Ky., is licensed to sell beer in some of its stores, and Fred Higgins, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, takes the responsibility seriously. Mandatory training includes emphasizing how important it is for employees to verify that those who buy alcoholic beverages are of legal drinking age.

But with about 1,200 sales clerks in the 106 Minit Mart convenience stores throughout Kentucky and Tennessee, providing and monitoring employee instruction can be difficult, Higgins says.

Because traditional training methods such as manuals and videotapes hadn't yielded results that were completely satisfactory, Higgins recently began an experiment in high-tech instruction with the aim of increasing employee comprehension, retention, and acceptance.

He hired VIS Development Corp. of Waltham, Mass., to produce a prototype course on alcoholic-beverage control in the computer data storage format known as CD-ROM (compact disk, read-only memory).

Andrew E. Snider, managing director of VIS Development, has produced more than 50 custom CD-ROM presentations for training and other purposes. He attributes the growing popularity of such presentations to their effectiveness.

The CD-ROM format is well-suited to the presentation of instructional and other kinds of complex material. A single disk, which looks like a common audio compact disk, can hold 650 megabytes or more of information. More than 450 3 1/2-inch floppy disks would be required to hold the same amount of data. Moreover, data on a CD-ROM can be in the form of text, photos or illustrations, video clips, audio recordings, or all of these.

Though more a student aid than a business reference, the 1995 Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia by Compton's NewMedia Inc. of Carlsbad, Calif., is a striking example of the information-carrying capacity of a CD-ROM. A single CD-ROM contains the full text of the approximately 35,000 articles in the print version of the 26-volume encyclopedia as well as about 15 hours of audio recordings and more than two hours of video clips, three-dimensional animation sequences, and other graphics. This CD-ROM sells for about $80.

Most CD-ROM software is for entertainment or education, and most CD-ROM players are in homes and schools. Yet like Higgins of Minit Mart Foods, managers of small and midsize businesses have begun putting CD-ROM technology to productive use in the workplace under at least three broad categories:

Commercial Software Applications

Of substantial benefit to business users are the continuing efforts by many software publishers to take advantage of the CD-ROM's mass storage and multimedia capacities. Multimedia refers to a mix of text, sound, animation, and still and motion pictures.

For example, LegalPoint for Windows was published by Teneron Corp. of Overland Park, Kan., in August 1994 on two floppy disks, which sell for $99.95. The program's mission is to help users reduce their legal expenses by enabling them to produce legal documents on their own. Unlike several competitors, whose products deal primarily with personal legal instruments such as wills, LegalPoint helps firms produce more than 70 common small-business legal documents, says Teneron's president, Todd Smith.

The software is selling well, and users are generally pleased with the "expert guidance" it provides, Smith says. On the horizon, he says, is multimedia content on CD-ROM that will make the product even more useful in helping laymen correctly and confidently complete complex business legal documents.

The CD-ROM version of LegalPoint, which Smith says will be on the market by mid-1995, will feature a "video button" that, when activated with a mouse click, will launch one of about 100 explanatory motion pictures.

For example, says Smith, a video associated with the equipment lease suggested by the program will emphasize the critical importance of filing a supplemental financing statement with the state's secretary of state. (This filing provides the business owner with clear legal recourse in the event the lessee defaults.) Seeing and hearing this point made on a video, contrasted with merely reading it in text, "increase the software's educational value--and money-saving potential--at least tenfold," Smith estimates.

Commercial software published in CD-ROM format "can be a boon for small businesses," says Ron Logee, owner of MacMaven, a consulting, training, and multimedia design company in Arlington, Va. "This technology gives entrepreneurs low-cost access to mounds of data never available to them before," says Logee, who also teaches multimedia courses at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C.

Nation's Business editors have put many CD-ROM programs designed for business use through their paces. Following are several that we found useful:

Business Library, Volume 1 ($59.95, Allegro New Media). A dozen business books and three business videos at your fingertips.

Executive's Factomatic ($39.95, Compton's NewMedia Inc.). Not a video or audio program; just hundreds of megabytes of useful advice.